Top Priority.

"What do you mean absolutely not? They just want to talk to me, and in exchange you guys get to walk free. Which means you're no longer a target of the Confederation, which in turn means that they would no longer have the need to come here looking for us, and everyone remains safe. So why the bloody hell can I not just go to them?!"

I threw my hands up, wondering what backwards logic Roman had going on in his head that could make him refuse this.

"Because you will never come back." He answered simply, voice hard as steel, and my eyes widened for a moment, before I then focused my gaze on his more seriously.

"What do you mean?"

Roman let out a raucous, bellowing laughter. "You truly believe that the British Vampire Confederation wants to see you, just to talk after learning about your spider curse? What do you think the word 'unconditionally' means?" He scoffed, then walked over to the table in the center of the common room, to grab the half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting on it.

He chugged it, drinking straight from the bottle as he began pacing the length of the room, before finally stopping again a few feet in front of me.

"They will make you into a lab specimen. They will tear you open, and cut things out of you. They will inject you with the most vile of potions and poisons in demented attempts to figure out how you've been surviving the curse. And they will not stop until they have an answer, or at least until you're dead. Do you understand, Vasilis?" Roman growled through clenched teeth, his icy fury almost causing me to shiver as I swallowed hard.

I might be suicidal, but I surely did not want to be subjected to being a lab rat and the other atrocities Roman just listed.

I nodded quietly, then opened my mouth to speak.

"So, what do we do then? We can't just let them come here and have innocent people get caught up in all this."

"Well, I don't really give a bloody fuck about the little witchy blood bags running around the halls of this school. Our top priority is to protect you, now that the Confederation has made their intentions undoubtedly clear. Everything else is secondary to that." Roman said, voice unshaken and gaze unwavering.

I swallowed hard and looked away from him, unable to hold his gaze when he was radiating such cold intensity.

Protecting me? Protecting me was a top priority? I thought...I thought they didn't care about me.

Aiko stood up from her seat and bounced over with a reassuring smile on her small round pale face that was covered in piercings, and leaned forward to wrap her arms around my torso.

"We've got you, little V. Don't worry. Don't you worry a tiny bit." She patted my back reassuringly and I simply stood there, still in utter shock.

"It's one thing for them to be so audacious as to send me a letter filled with threats against my friends and I. But then they went further to threaten a sire of mine? Unspeakable! The complete, unmitigated disrespect!"

I dare say I'd never seen Roman that angry before. And that's saying a lot, because he was always angry. Always.

His bulky frame seemed to swell to twice his original size as he breathed heavily through his nose. His midnight ocean eyes had turned completely black, as his face twisted into a sneer that would have had me bolting through the door, had I not known his anger was not directed at me.

I could clearly see in that moment, why he'd earned the title, 'The Devil' over the years.

"They will pay. I will make them suffer, every last one of them!" Roman seethed, and I shuddered at the thought of how exactly he planned to make them suffer.

"But, why would protecting me be top priority when so many lives are at stake?" I managed to ask without my voice cracking, even though I was shaking on the inside.

Aiko, who was still standing by my side, gave me a look that said she'd have loved to slap me really hard.

I looked away from her and continued, undeterred.

"I mean, even if what you say is true and I would be subjected to being a...lab specimen," I swallowed, my stomach twisting again at the thought. "Is it not still a win? You sacrifice one man to stop a war and save everybody else. Seems like a fair trade in my opinion."

I shrugged in a way I hoped was nonchalant, and silence reigned.

Cold, fury-filled, tensed silence.

Suddenly, Charlotte was out of her seat and was standing in front of me with her claw-like fingers wrapped around my throat as she held me against the wall.

Her glossed lips moved to my ear. "How dense could you possibly be, sweet sweet Vasilis?" She sighed, then let go of me as she stepped back.

I adjusted the collar of my shirt while glaring at her.

"You are one of us, sweet cheeks. You became one of us that night Roman pulled you from that freezing lake in Currie, and we do not sacrifice one of our own." Charlotte's wicked grey eyes pierced mine with cold seriousness, as though she needed to make sure I understood every syllable of her words.

I resisted the urge to shiver, my mind turning numb at the memory of that cold night I always wished so desperately to go back to.

"Even if it means the world will burn for it," Sophia's bored, drawling voice came from her position on the sofa, promptly interrupting my trip down memory lane.

She was sat, legs crossed elegantly as she chewed on and popped the piece of gum in her mouth.

"We'd rather gladly sit back and watch this shit hole of a world go up in flames than sacrifice one of our own."

Roman too was suddenly standing in front of me, eyes locked unto mine as I lifted my head to meet his murderous gaze.

"Do you understand now, Vasilis?" He gritted through clenched teeth, eyes boring into mine as though he were trying to drill his words into my skull.

"If it is war they want, then we'll give them war." His fingers clenched into rock hard fists. "But you are not being sacrificed today or any other day, so discard those thoughts of martyrdom in your head."

And then he moved away to settle back in his spot on the sofa, as if nothing had happened at all.

I stood there, heart thumping wildly in my chest with the intense urge to break down, and Charlotte's marble grey eyes softened as she patted my cheek gently. Then she went back to take her seat next to Roman.

Aiko also gave me one last reassuring smile, her black eyes glittering with warmth, then she returned to her seat next to Suiko.

"Stop darkening the doorway with your brooding self and come take a seat." Roman's deep voice bellowed. "We have a lot to discuss."

I hesitated a moment longer, resisting the heaviness in my heart and the treacherous tears threatening to follow, before I finally pushed myself off the wall, and begrudgingly made my way over to plop on the empty sofa on Roman's right.